Terms of Endearment
by Syntactical
Summary: In ye grande olde tradition of 'Alex goes to live with Wolf, and K-Unit hijinks happen'. Chapter eleven: things do not go quite as planned; also, Alex's first appointment.
1. Many Pebbles

_"...the process of building a family, of making a living for it, of nurturing and maintaining the individuals in it, costs worlds of pain."  
>-Lillian Rubin<em>

* * *

><p>All things considered, Wolf took it well. At least, he didn't shoot, maim, or actively attempt to kill anyone. Instead, he sat down on his dusty excuse for a living room sofa and put his head in his hands.<p>

"You're a _girl_," he said.

Despite the serious circumstances, Alex couldn't quite stop the beginnings of an amused smile from crowding out her attempts at stoicism. It's not that she found this particularly _funny_, exactly, but the part of her that still smarted from her weeks in training reveled in the sense of schadenfreude. "Yes."

"You're a teenage _girl_. And you were with us all that ti – " His head snapped up sharply, eyes wide with sudden horror. "_All that time_."

"Yes." After a moment, she realized what he was probably thinking of _(a billion excuses to get the showers alone, and no end of averting her eyes)_, and embarrassment coloured her face. She cleared her throat and decided it might be best to steer the topic a little. "Yes. Um. In addition to the training, the Agency needed to know that I could pass as a boy. If it was needed." And she had, with flying colours. If Wolf's reaction was any gauge to the rest of the unit, none of them had suspected that Kit was anything other than a distinctly _male_ nuisance.

Apparently, her admittedly weak attempt at assurance fell on deaf ears. Wolf had dropped his head into his hands again and had starting shaking it as if that would somehow change the reality of their situation. Alex somewhat awkwardly hefted her travel bag, thinking it might be best to leave him to it. "Should I put this in my room – "

Wolf, she noted, took a few moments more than strictly should have been necessary to respond. "_Yes_. Yes. Jesus, just – it's the second one from the bathroom. Unpack or whatever, I'm going to be here for – I'm going to be here."

"All right." It only took her a minute to locate her room. Like the rest of Wolf's flat, it was fairly bland and un-lived in, but he'd at least made an attempt to clean it before her arrival. She could tell by the tracks in the carpet that it had been vacuumed recently, but the closet stank of must and stale air. She hadn't brought much; MI6 had assured her that the placement was temporary, only necessary while they cleared up some _unfortunate_ allegations of child abuse against Jack. Mr. Blunt in particular had been extremely adamant that it wouldn't take more than a week or two to clear the charges, but now that she was away from Jack's care, Alex couldn't stop the terrible feeling in her gut that the MI6 would prefer her permanently in the keeping of someone more… _government_.

The bed was relatively comfortable, which came as something of a pleasant surprise; certainly better than she had expected. Once she had finished setting her few belongings in dresser drawers, she sat on it cross-legged, holding the one main personal item she'd allowed herself: a photograph of herself, Jack, and Ian on a camping trip, taken a year before her uncle's death. There wasn't anything particularly special about that photograph compared to any others, but something about the smile on her face gave her pause. She just looked… _happy._ She was holding up a fish she'd caught; Jack was still a little blurry from trying to get in the frame before the timer went off, and Ian had just finished tugging a lock of hair out of her face. It had been below her shoulders, then. The SAS had made her cut it for training, and the few missions since requiring her to pose as a boy had required she keep it that way.

Speaking of. She placed the photograph on the dresser, careful to set it so that the glass cover was facing downwards, away from any prying eyes. The one mirror in the room was appallingly smudged and clouded, but it gave her enough of a reflection for a spot check. In deference to the heat, she'd worn a tank top today. Like most of her clothes, it wasn't especially feminine, but it also did nothing to hide the few curves she'd managed to develop (despite MI6's best efforts). She bit her lip and dug into her clothes for an oversized pullover. It didn't make her look especially masculine, but with the way it swallowed her upper body, it at least succeeded in giving her an androgynous appearance.

On her way back downstairs to check on Wolf, she heard his voice engaged in excited conversation from the kitchen, probably on the telephone.

"_- the hell am I supposed to do with a teenage girl? I mean, Jesus, I was only getting used to the idea of having the kid in the house!"_ A pause, during which she could hear Wolf pull out a chair and sit down on it heavily, Slowly, she began descending the stairs again, taking care not to trigger any squeaky boards that might give away her position. _"Kit! Kit's a girl! Of course I didn't know, why the hell would any of us know? Who the hell sends a teenage girl to an all-male SAS training camp?" _

Before he could receive any answer, Alex pushed the door open. "If it helps," she said, voice quiet and almost hesitant, "you can think of me as a boy."

Wolf swore and twisted around to face her. Too late, she remembered she was still wearing makeup from this morning. Since she had started taking missions from MI6, she'd developed a certain pleasure in at least _looking_ like a normal teenage girl, when she wasn't running around the houses of megalomaniacs, trying to save the world and not get herself killed in the process. Today especially, she'd felt the need to assert _some_ sort of individual style, even if it was small and came in a tube. But it also ruined the reassuring androgyny she'd been trying to project in the hopes that it would make Wolf less likely to throw her out for being the wrong gender.

"I'll call you back," he said into the telephone before hanging up and facing her. "Look, Kit – Alex," he corrected. "It's _fine_. I just wish I had a little warning, that's all."

Despite the ache in her heart at the thought of being shuffled off somewhere else, she reminded herself that she had no desire to endure Wolf when he didn't want her around, and pushed on. "Or – or I could go." To her horror, she felt a catch in her throat as she spoke, and cast about the room for something to focus on. It wasn't as if she was wild about staying with the K-Unit leader, but the thought of being shuffled off to some nameless MI6 agent – or worse, back to the uniform barracks she'd spent the last night in after Child Services showed – cut into her in a way a knife never could.

Wolf must have seen something of that in her face, because he sighed and said, somewhat reluctantly, "No. You were still a part of the unit. That means s_omething_." Even if he himself wasn't sure what it was, as she guessed he didn't. To her surprise, he then cracked a smile that, admittedly, looked a little rusty, as if he didn't have all that many uses for it. "Besides, how else am I supposed to get some downtime? Hell, if all it takes is babysitting _you_, I would've volunteered months ago."

When she didn't show any particular signs of amusement at his attempt at humour, he let the quip fade. "Look," he said with another sigh, "give me an hour to adjust, then we'll figure out dinner or something. All right?"

After a quick glance to his face to determine if he really meant it or was just trying to prevent some kind of childish temper tantrum, she nodded. "All right."

And maybe it wasn't a rockslide of acceptance, she decided, but that many pebbles shifting at once were bound to have some sort of seismic affect. Maybe he wouldn't kick her back to MI6 immediately, after all.


	2. For Old Friends Who've Just Met

Oh, look, an Author's Note! I just realized I forgot this in the first chapter, but as I'm sure you've noticed by now, Alex's SAS codename is Kit instead of Cub. This is because (a) what with there being a Wolf in the unit, I automatically associate it with wolf cub, and (b) I was thinking to myself, _hey, I wonder what other, non-K-Unit SAS people would call her when she's grown up? ...oh god. _So, yes, I switched it to Kit, which has a marginally more acceptable form for female adults. And that's it, really! (And why yes, this chapter title is nicked from the Muppets, ta.)

* * *

><p><em>before.<em>

His hand brushed her face, blissfully warm in the freezing room. Or maybe she was the one who was freezing; it was hard to tell. He was talking, but it was hard to concentrate on his words. "_This is not a game, young lady,"_ she thought he said. His voice floated past her ears, indistinct as if spoken underwater. "_No one will hold your hand if you fall."_

She laughed, and spat out blood-tinged saliva. "Of course it's not a game. Games are for _children_."

She could feel the flat of his knife resting against her belly, cold and sharp. He turned it and put the barest slice in her skin, hardly more than a paper cut. "Ms. Rider, perhaps you have forgotten that you are still a child." He dragged the blade across her stomach, leaving a fine line of blood in its wake. "I assure you, I have not. Tell me what it is you are here for, and I will leave you at your ease. I am an artisan, not a," his words twisted in disgust, "child-torturer."

"_Really_," she spat out. "You're doing an excellent job fooling me, then."

The knife cut a little deeper. "I assure you, young lady, I'm as upset about this development as you are. I'm not a _paediatrician_." He scowled darkly at the wall before lifting his blade and plunging it into her. "You're a young girl. Young girls enjoy flowers and things, don't they?"

The wound was surface only, not deep enough to have hit any organs. Once she could breathe again, she gaped up at the man, unsure if he'd really just said what she thought he had, or if it was an effect of shock. "I suppose."

He nodded briskly, as if she'd confirmed something of importance to him, before dragging the knife out along a winding line, following some logic only he knew.

To distract herself, she pressed her fingernails into her palms hard enough to draw blood of their own. It wasn't much, but it helped. "Is that all you needed to know? Because I'd like to be on my way now – "

He frowned at her over his glasses. "If you don't have anything useful to say, don't say anything at all. I _am_ trying to do you a service."

"Remind me to never look you up if I need a doctor," she muttered.

After what felt like hours but couldn't have been much more than five minutes, the door blew open, and a set of khaki'd soldiers filed in. The leader took stock of the room for any other, hidden occupants, before signaling to one of his soldiers to untie her. "What the fuck is going on here?"

Once she could move under her own power, she stretched out her arms, long since gone stiff. "I'm the agent who called you here." While the military unit was still working out if they believed her or not, she removed what appeared to be a small gem from her boot and gingerly set a foot down on the ground. "Tell MI6 I've retrieved their micro-computer. I'm going home."

* * *

><p><em>after.<em>

She woke in an unfamiliar bed, tangled up in sheets a touch too scratchy to be comfortable in a room that still smelled vaguely of stale air. She blinked up at the ceiling for a minute before the pieces fit into place.

_Oh_, she thought. _MI6. Wolf_. For a moment, she was tempted to turn over and go right back to sleep, but a sharp stinging in her abdomen reminded her that she had a few things to attend to. Underneath her shirt, the dressings had gotten appallingly messy. The knife cuts had yet to close up, _still_. She groaned into her pillow then pulled herself up. Work to do.

The strong smell of coffee that hit her as soon as she opened her door meant Wolf was up. She paused, wondering if either of them was really ready to deal with the other this early in the morning, but realized too late that she didn't have a choice anymore. Unthinking, she'd stepped on a creaky board, and Wolf was already glancing up from his paper.

She hung in place, not entirely sure what to do now she was here. "Morning."

"Kit." He made an abortive attempt to get up from the table. "There's cereal in the kitchen." He paused, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. "If you want it."

It occurred to her – not exactly for the first time – that Wolf had no idea how to act around her when he wasn't making her life a living hell. She offered him a half-smile for the effort at being civil, even though she wasn't particularly interested in the idea of breakfast at the moment. "Um, thanks. Where do you –" She cleared her throat, one hand drifting thoughtlessly to her stomach to brush against the bandages. "Where do you keep your first aid?"

"In the – " His eyes snapped into focus on her. "What the hell do you need it for?"

She bit her lip and tried out an awkward smile in an attempt to defuse the situation before it could get difficult. "Just a few scrapes. It's not a big deal, just – " She shrugged her shoulders helplessly.

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Right," he said and abruptly snapped from what she'd started to think of as Wolf-at-home to Wolf-the-soldier. "Sit down, I'll get the bandages and disinfectant."

"I could really do it myself – "

"That's an _order_, Kit." He didn't even bother to check if she'd obeyed, but that was definitely the man she'd trained with, and old instincts took over. When he re-entered the room and saw her sitting at more-or-less attention, she could have sworn he almost smiled. "What've you got?"

"It's nothing, _really_." Casually, she laid her palm against the table, hiding the pale half-moon marks still visible from her fingernails. She had no doubts about his field dressing competence (though Snake had them all beat by a mile), but something about baring herself to Wolf – literally – made her stomach churn uncomfortably.

Wolf crossed his arms.

She winced. Her weeks at Brecon Beacons had hard-wired into her to expect some sort of sabotage or pain from that look, even though he was technically offering the opposite this time. "It's on my stomach, mostly," she offered with reluctance. As he knelt in front of her and started pulling out supplies, she bit her lip. "Look, the person who did this, he wasn't used to – it looks a bit – " She floundered helplessly, not sure how to explain herself.

Instead, she gave up and pulled her shirt up just enough for him to have access to the knife wound. For a minute, there was silence as he worked, peeling the old bandages away and gently cleaning her skin. It would have been bearable, if she hadn't known what was coming.

A minute or two in, he sat back on his heels abruptly, expression stormy in a way that didn't bode well (usually, she couldn't help but think with a wince, for her). "What the fuck is this?"

"He didn't know what to do with me," she whispered. "So he… he thought I might like…"

Wolf laughed, the sound tinged with disbelief. Now that the old blood had been cleared away, the lines were fairly clear. Two wings, body, antennae, even the beginnings of wing design. The bloody outline of a butterfly etched into her skin. It had shocked her the first time she saw it, to the point of dry-heaving into the toilet. Now, she just tried not to think about it much.

"He thought you might like a little _body art_?"The words all but exploded out of Wolf, and she flinched at the noise. He held up a placating hand and took a deep breath to calm himself. "I'm just not used to seeing _butterflies _cut into – " Another breath, and he offered her the med kit. "You finish up. I have to make a phone call."

With all the practical experience she'd been getting since MI6 had recruited her, it only took her a few minutes to dress the knife wounds neatly and cleanly. But that meant she had nothing much else to do but listen to Wolf – fairly easy, since he wasn't bothering much to regulate his vocal level.

"_Look, I just need you over here_," she could hear him saying._ "I mean, Jesus, Kit is… Just get the hell over here."_

Quietly, she packed up the kit before heading her way back to the guest room. If Wolf was already calling MI6 to take her away, she might as well be prepared to go.


	3. Catch As Catch Can

A note: I am shamelessly borrowing from K-Unit fanon, so if it seems like I've stolen something - a team member's name, say - from another author, it is only with the best of intentions, and I promise to care for it well. Also, it is entirely possible I'm getting a little too fond of semi-cliffhanger endings. Whoops.

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><p>Thankfully, even though she heard him come off the phone, Wolf didn't pursue her to the bedroom. It gave her some time to pack up what little she'd unpacked and steel herself for wherever MI6 would throw her next. She could only hope they bothered to find her <em>anywhere<em>, instead of deciding it was too much trouble and bunging her in imprisonment quarters again. Or maybe they'd conveniently _think_ of some alternative, like investigating a politician selling government secrets on an island a thousand kilometres away or something.

When she heard the door buzz and Wolf call out her name, she shouldered her bag and headed into the hall, not particularly paying attention to whatever unfriendly government operative MI6 had roped into transporting her this time. "It's all right," she said, quickly, before he could launch into awkward explanations. "I didn't unpack much, anyway, so I'm ready to – "

"Kit?"

The word came out in a soft Scottish brogue. The sudden realization that she recognized the speaker knocked her off balance, and she stopped dead. "Snake? What are you doing here?"

Wolf stared at her bag. "What the hell are you - " Snake gave him a sharp look, and he cut off abruptly.

"Were you planning on going somewhere?" Snake asked, softly.

She shifted her weight, suddenly self-conscious and embarrassed to have come to the wrong conclusion. "I thought – I assumed I was being sent back to MI6."

Wolf snorted, loudly. "I'm not about to give up that quick."

Alex felt somewhat less than assured.

Snake sighed. "Let's just leave why you thought you were being kicked out, for the moment. James called me because he thought your… " he waved vaguely at her, "injury… might be serious enough to warrant seeing to." He didn't make a move towards her, but he did raise his eyebrows pointedly. "Is it?"

Alex shrugged up a shoulder, distinctly uncomfortable. Snake may have been the friendliest of K-Unit, but she didn't like the idea of going over the knife wound with anyone, really. Especially not so soon after. It was… _private_, sort of, the latest in a long line of things MI6 had trained her to keep quiet about. "It's all right, I guess."

"How old is it?" Unlike Wolf, who was staring at her as if he might personally tear her apart if she didn't answer truthfully, Snake was very intent, but gentle.

She shrugged again. "A few days, I guess."

"A few?"

"Three." She concentrated on a spot in the wall behind the two men. "I'd only just gotten back when Child Services – I mean, my teachers must have been talking to them before, but this," she waved to her stomach, "was the last straw, or something."

Snake nodded thoughtfully. "And someone at MI6 saw to it? What did they say?"

"They didn't."

Snake frowned. Wolf, however, got the first word in. "What the hell do you mean, 'they didn't'?"

"I mean – " She bit her lip. "They were busy with securing the compound, and then later with finding me someplace to stay, so I just – bandaged it myself."

Wolf looked about ready to launch a one-man campaign against the incompetence of MI6 doctors and teenage spies, but Snake just deepened his frown. "And it's still bleeding? After three days?"

"I suppose so." She frowned back at him. "It's not _really _– I mean, it'll stop. It just takes time."

"And you're the expert on that, are you," Wolf muttered darkly. Snake jabbed him in the stomach, and he shut up.

"Ignore him, he's incompetent when it comes to anything like tact," Snake said pleasantly. "Would you mind giving me the number for your doctor? I think we should give him a ring."

Alex placed a hand at the back of her neck awkwardly. "I don't exactly… well, they sent me to St. Dominic's, but I don't really have a regular doctor there, and I can't exactly go to my GP since almost everything's classified now, and the last time I had a check-up was…" She swallowed, and thought _from Scorpia_. "A while ago."

"Then we'll take you to St. Dominic's," Snake said, with somewhat forced cheer. "We'll bring James along because he's good at signing things, but if you'd like, we can leave him off anywhere – "

She blinked. "'James'?"

Wolf – James – gave her what was almost a smirk. "You didn't think I only had a codename, did you, Kit?"

"Well," she said, and halted, because, well – _yes. _"I hadn't really thought about it."

"Now that we've had introductions," Snake cut in smoothly, "I think maybe Kit should put her bag away so we can be going. We can use my car."

* * *

><p>So, with two SAS soldiers in two, Alex arrived at the hospital. It was a fairly reasonable affair, which is to say that Wolf glowered at the attendants and Snake answered questions and she sat quietly in a plastic chair, waiting for a doctor to see her. To her somewhat-relief, the doctor assigned to her case was new, not the one who had handled her bullet wound.<p>

The woman who came in to see her was a plain brunette with a kind smile that she fixed on Alex the moment she entered the room. "Good morning. I'm Dr. Santos. I hear you had a little incident recently…" Without particularly waiting for an answer, she started checking over the chart. Alex could practically pinpoint the moment she read the little note denoting her as SIS. "…Ms. Rider?"

She offered up a wry smile. "You could call it that."

"Mm." The doctor slipped on a pair of gloves and gestured to Alex. "Do you mind if I have a look?"

In response, Alex pulled up her shirt to her midriff. The doctor peeled away the bandages with care and took in the injury with a critical eye. If she was surprised by the distinct imagery to it, she didn't let on. "A few stitches," she said. "Nothing critical. I'll give you a mild anesthetic before I start."

Alex hesitated. "It's not bad, is it?"

Dr. Santos softened. "It's been kept clean, so you probably won't have to worry about infection. It'll probably scar in some capacity, but there are options for scar removal, especially under the… circumstances." She smiled. "I'm sure you'll be fine, Alex."

She breathed out a sigh. "Good," Alex said. "And – I'd like to talk about scar removal. When I can."

* * *

><p>Snake and Wolf were waiting for her outside when the nurse seeing to her finally let her go, prescription for pain pills clutched in her right hand. She stopped in front of the two, pausing awkwardly. "We could – go. Now. If you like."<p>

Snake stood, but Wolf remained sitting, head cushioned in his arms. She glanced at Snake, confused, but the other man wasn't any help. He just stared at her steadily until she felt she couldn't take it anymore. "What?"

"Kit." Snake's voice was perfectly calm, giving away nothing of what he was thinking. "Is there something you'd like to tell us?"


	4. Inter: ventions, ludes, & communication

Authorly thoughts? This is just here because I don't like the share button cutting into the body of the story. So, uh, yeah. Peace.

* * *

><p>Quickly, she ran over a check list of probable causes. They'd already seen her stomach and wouldn't be stupid enough to ask questions that obviously had classified answers, so that wasn't it. They could have been speaking to an employee about her last visit (and they might have known about it already; she couldn't remember if Wolf's get-well card had mentioned appendicitis or not), but, thanks to security measures, the chances of that happening were fairly slim. Only a few people knew about her presence beyond a name and a list of medical concerns. And that left… nothing, really. "Not really?"<p>

"They want my authorization for a psych eval," Wolf said, abruptly. "I couldn't give it to them because MI6 would have my head on a platter if I had you talking to a quack they hadn't cleared, but your doctor," he fixed her with a pointed look, "thinks you might have an eating disorder."

Eventually, Alex became aware that her mouth was opening and closing uselessly. She tightened her jaw to stop the useless motion. "It's the amenorrhea*, isn't it?"

Snake frowned, taken aback by her answer. "You knew about it?"

"I was diagnosed _ages_ ago," she said, feeling slightly impatient now that she knew what they were on about. "It's not a big deal. It'll clear up on its own."

For once, Wolf was left in the dust. He had nothing on the terrifyingly dark look on Snake's face. "_Not a big deal_?"

"It's not like I plan to get pregnant any time soon," Alex sniped back, starting to feel annoyed as well as bewildered by the out of proportion reaction. "I was told not to worry about it."

"You were _told not to_ – " For a moment, Snake looked as if he were going to punch something. Wolf, meanwhile, just grew increasingly angry at having been left behind in a conversation about someone under his care that obviously didn't signify anything good. "_Kit_, your body _shut down functions_ because it couldn't sustain them any longer. I'd say that's _pretty bloody important_."

"What the hell is amenorrhea?" Wolf cut in, finally fed up with staying in the background. "And why the hell wouldn't she be treated for it?"

Oh, god. Alex rubbed a hand over her face. Wolf was one of the last people in the world she wanted to be discussing her _menstrual cycle _with. "It's not from _not eating_," she snapped. "It's from…" She cast about for a word that didn't broadcast to anyone within hearing range that the government regularly had her running around like an Olympic athlete on speed. "Activity."

Wolf sat down suddenly. "Please," he gritted out. "Tell me this does not have to do with sex."

"Oh, _my_ _god_." To her shame, the words came out a full octave higher than she'd intended. But this was just _far_ too much. "I'm going back."

As she stalked away, she could hear Snake start to assure Wolf that no, this had nothing to with sex, but thanks to the fast pace she'd set for herself, she was soon blissfully out of earshot. Rather than head for the car and be forced to face them again within minutes, she took a turn and headed for the nearest tube station. She could easily get back to Wolf's on her own.

* * *

><p>The flat, as it turned out, wasn't empty; which was just as well, because halfway back Alex had realized she hadn't been given a key. Which just made her relief at having a familiar face open the door for her all the greater.<p>

"Alex." Ben Daniels eyed her with bemusement. "Good to see you not in the middle of a multi-national disaster. …This isn't one, is it?"

She felt some of the tension from the past hour start to drain away, and somewhere, down underneath it all, a smile unearthed. "Not unless Wolf starts one."

"Of course." He stood back and let her in, still clearly lost. "Not that it isn't nice to see you, but… what are you doing here?"

She sighed. "Can we talk about this over lunch? I haven't eaten since yesterday, and I'm starving."

"Of course." Ben leaned against the door frame and watched as she made a beeline for the kitchen. "I should warn you, though, some of the things James keeps in his fridge are – "

Alex froze. And stared. "That's."

"Yeah."

"I don't know what that is," she said, in horrified fascination. "Is it a weapon?"

"That's what Neal thought." Ben smiled wryly and reached past her for a package of lunch meats. "We don't have to take our chances with it yet, though."

With a bit of work, they managed to put together a couple of decent turkey sandwiches, and, true to their agreement, Fox didn't ask any questions until she was at least halfway through hers. But there was only so long she could put him off, especially when he'd been staring at her steadily for the past five minutes. She set her sandwich down. "Wolf's looking after me for a few days."

"That much I was starting to get the idea of." His gaze didn't waver. "But, and I ask this fully knowing that James isn't exactly the paternal type, as you well know: why?"

She shifted in her seat uncomfortably. "There were some… questions. About my guardian." She risked a glance at him and was horrified to see his expression already softening into a wary pity. "No! It's the job. I'm always disappearing from schooling and showing up with bruises and things, so they thought."

An explosion of sound coming from the door had the both of them suddenly tensed and ready for a fight. Alex wasn't much assured when it turned out to just be Wolf storming in, followed closely by Snake. "What the fuck did you think you were doing? You don't just disappear on me like that! You could've been kidnapped or passed out in the streets or something – "

"Uh," Ben said. "Did I miss something?"

Alex eyed her sandwich, glumly. "Just a little."

* * *

><p>* Medical show moment! Amenorrhea is the absence of a menstrual cycle. It is not, in itself, much of an issue unless you're trying to get pregnant, and it can be caused by harmless things like birth control. Alex's is hypothalemic in nature, which basically means she's exercising too much for her calorie intake to support (stress can also be a factor). It's also part of Female Athlete Triad, along with disordered eating and osteoporosis. Thus, Snake having a fit.<p>

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!


	5. Begins With the First Misstep

Authorly thoughts? I don't, uh, actually have any of those, I just didn't like the way FF formatted without something up here. Peace.

* * *

><p>The next hour saw Alex sitting rather miserably in the living room while Wolf told her, in no uncertain terms, what he expected of her while she was under his roof. She wasn't to disappear like she had (and ignored any attempts she made to point out she'd told him she was going back to the flat). She was to inform him of any medical conditions she had, regardless of whether she considered them important. She was to pay attention, smarten up, and generally be the epitome of teenager-dom. Ben and Snake tried to run interference for her when she started looking particularly desperate at the increasingly loud demands, but for the most part, not even the three of them could manage a word in her defense.<p>

So instead, she sat quietly and paid attention to her surroundings. Wolf – James – had a few pictures scattered around the room, family photos. There was one of K-Unit in some jungle location she didn't recognize, and another, somewhat aged picture depicting an entire family (his?), while a younger James kneeled next to a golden retriever staring trustfully into the camera. The dust around the corners of the room suggested that he wasn't particularly devoted to housekeeping (no surprises there). A bookshelf with several battered volumes and a small collection of DVDs was placed unobtrusively in the corner, and a table with a sad-looking plant obviously long past the possibility of resurrection sat near the window. She couldn't identify many hiding places, but some of the books looked heavy enough to double as weapons and the curtains (a dismal faded beige) had the beginnings of a rip that would make it relatively easy to pull off and use for a blindfold or strangulation.

Just as she'd finished her silent sweep, she suddenly realized the rest of K-Unit was looking at her expectantly. "Sorry, what?"

Wolf looked about ready to launch into another tirade of house rules and regulation, but Snake managed to get his mouth open first. "I think," he said, pointedly, "that maybe Kit should get some rest after her stitches. Don't you, _James_?"

"Yes." Fox caught on quickly. "It's only been a few days, after all, so she could probably use some. I know assignments can get fairly exhausting, especially for –" He caught the pained look on her face and had the good graces to flush. "Never mind."

Despite her indignation at the thought of needing a _rest_ like some sort of overwrought five-year-old, she could recognize that they were trying to give her an out and felt grateful for at least the thought. Before Wolf could get started again, she took the opening to flee the room.

Briefly, she considered climbing out the window and holing up somewhere until the MI6 cleared Jack's charges, but dismissed it about as quickly as it had come. Wolf would probably place her under martial law or something.

* * *

><p>Breakfast the next morning was a painful affair, full of loaded silences and Wolf paying too much attention to how much she ate. Thankfully, the next day she had school, which meant she could get away from the uncomfortable tension that had settled over the flat and concentrate on other things. Tom was clamouring to hear about 'her new SAS guardian', which meant once classes were over, they set out for a largely deserted restaurant for snacks and privacy.<p>

To his credit, Tom mostly shut up and let her explain what she felt comfortable with, and when she was done, he just glanced down awkwardly and said. "So your stomach. Does it – hurt?" She shrugged, which he took to mean 'not really' and let the topic drop. After that, they mostly chatted about school happenings and chemistry, which Tom had taken the responsibility of catching her up on. It wasn't until it was gone five in the afternoon that she realized how long they'd been out.

She swore loudly in French and flushed a little at Tom's slightly scandalized look. "Sorry. But I think calling in late was probably in the rules somewhere."

Tom offered her a crooked grin. "I'll come visit you in detention." But the good humour faded from his face as he said, quietly, "Do you know when you're going back to live with her?"

She shook her head, quick and too stiffly. "I don't know. Mrs. Jones said they'd tell me as soon as they'd cleared everything up. Apparently, my – situation – is making it difficult for them to work it out." And then, before she could lose her nerve, she dialed Wolf's number. "Er – hello, I know it's been a few hours, I've been out with a mate – from school, we've been doing coursework – _yes_, I know, but I –" She winced at a particularly explosive phrasing. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

While Tom watched, she threw her mobile down on the table with rather more force than necessary and glowered at it. "Bloody SAS."

* * *

><p>The flat was completely silent when she got to it. Alex halted just inside the door before dropping off her book bag and executing a search. A little poking around unearthed a Snake seated in the kitchen with a cup of tea, but no Wolf anywhere in the flat. She eyed the SAS soldier warily, privately wondering if this was the set-up for another ambush. "Hello."<p>

He gestured to a seat and set his tea down. "Look," he said, cutting past the stage of awkward greetings and directly to the point. "James isn't very good with children. And we know you're not an ordinary teenager, but that's not always what he sees when he looks at you. And he may have gone… a bit overboard last night."

She grimaced, which Snake smartly took to mean that the only way Wolf could have gone more overboard would take a plank and probably a sunken treasure or two. He sighed. "The truth is, when it comes to taking care of other people, the only way he knows to be is what the SAS has taught him about taking care of his team. And since someone in charge still considers you enough of an unofficial official member of K-Unit to have informed us when you were in the hospital, Wolf does, too." He paused for a moment, staring quietly at the steam rising from his tea. "And since not only are you under his charge as part of his team but as a temporary dependent, he came on a bit –" This time, Snake was the one who grimaced. " – a bit too strong."

She muttered, "_Really_, I hadn't noticed," but Snake tactfully ignored it.

"What I'm trying to say is," he said, "that he's doing his best with this. And even though he's not here to say it himself, he _is_ – sorry – about not handling things very well."

She crossed her arms, fairly unimpressed. "Then why are you telling me this, instead of him?"

He winced, clearly having hoped he could get away without her bringing that up. "Ben and Neal dragged him off for a – "

"Intervention?" she suggested.

" – talk." He offered her a fairly sheepish look. "They said they'd bring back pizza once they'd sorted him out."

As tired and annoyed as she felt, Alex couldn't help a rush of amusement at the thought of the other two K-Unit members giving Wolf the third degree for his behaviour. She worried her bottom lip for a moment, then came to a decision. "All right," she said, eventually. "But – If he's really that bad at all this, why didn't he just tell MI6 no? I mean, they could've… " she shrugged up a shoulder unconcernedly, "found me someone else or kept me in the cells or something."

"Because you are a member of the unit, in your own way. The idea of one of us, especially one your age, being without a place to stay didn't sit too well with him." He glanced off for a moment, then furrowed his brow as her words suddenly registered with him. "Hold on, how do you mean '_in the cells_'?"

Recognizing the signs of another impending display of uncomfortable indignation on her behalf, Alex quickly gathered herself up and headed for the door. "I'm going to my room, call me when _they_ get back."

Snake frowned after her and half-stood to follow. "But –"

She shoved the bedroom door closed with a strategic kick of her foot and fled to the desk with her books. "Coursework!"


	6. Never Look an MI6 Gift in the Mouth

Holy cow, this one is almost double the lengths of the previous chapters. Bow to my word-processing capabilities!

* * *

><p>Strangely, though, when Alex investigated noises from outside and found the rest of K-Unit piling back into the flat with pizza boxes, things were… <em>better<em>. Snake flashed her a relieved smile when she ventured near, and Eagle, who she hadn't seen since training, halted in the middle of the room to stare at her before barking out a laugh.

"You weren't joking about her being a bird, were you?" He clapped Wolf on the shoulder with an amused snort. "I never thought I'd live to see the day that _Jamie_ here would be put in charge of a _teenage gi_–"

Wolf punched him in the shoulder a little harder than strictly necessary, and Eagle shot him a wounded look before composing himself into something more like the serious Eagle she'd known at Brecon Beacons. "I mean, it's very nice to re-make your acquaintance, K– Alex." But as soon as Wolf turned away to find plates, Eagle dropped his voice to a theatrical whisper. "And remember, should James ever seem in imminent danger of, I don't know, burning down the house or something, the emergency number is 999– "

"Eagle," Wolf snapped, "_shut up_. And that's an order."

Eagle turned a wounded look on Alex, as if she could somehow rescue him from his own mouth. Thankfully, Fox chose that moment to steer the conversation in safer directions. "I hope you like mushrooms. I swear Neal lives on them." He caught her eyes flicking between Snake and Eagle uncertainly, trying to work out which was Neal. "That's Eagle to you."

"Right," she murmured, feeling slightly dazed. Though she'd had a chance to see almost all of the unit individually and understood that they weren't all as dour as they'd been during her two weeks of training, she couldn't help but feel somewhat overwhelmed by the friendly banter they kept up when off-duty.

"And the Scotsman in the appalling shirt is Michael," Neal added helpfully. "Don't ask him about his family, because he'll get all weepy and start crying for the highlands of Loch Lomond – "

"_Aberdeen_."

" – and his old mum's baked sheep's eyes."

Snake flicked a balled-up napkin in his direction. "Keep that up, and I'm adding baked Eagle eyes to the tradition."

Alex was perched on the edge of a chair, watching the two of them go at it. For a moment, she felt disconcertingly as if she were one of the adult in the room, instead of them. "Thanks," she said, suddenly. "For bringing pizza. And– " Her eyes flicked towards Wolf, though she couldn't bring herself to say anything aloud.

Eagle – _Neal _– caught it quickly enough, though, and offered her an amiable smirk. "Giving the Big Bad Wolf a talking-to? No problem. As I'm sure we all know, James gets a bit out of his depth when it comes to interacting with humans. Do you remember how he got when Ben came back with that bullet wound?"

Ben grimaced, though whether in memory of the wound or Wolf's reaction, she couldn't be sure. "How could I forget?"

Either way, it gave her an opening to address Fox about his involvement with the MI6. "So you're still with the SAS, then?" she said, awkwardly. "You're not – "

"Not my style," he cut in smoothly. "I was only borrowed for that one mission. It's this lot for me again."

"And you love us!" Neal mumbled around a mouthful of cheese and mushroom.

Alex nodded, unsure if Ben being out of MI6 was a relief or not. It would have been nice to have someone in the agency she could trust, but on the other hand, if he'd stayed with MI6 he'd probably have been ordered to do something horrible sooner or later.

She was startled out of her thoughts by Wolf staring at her intently, brows furrowed. "You were involved in that mission?"

"Oh." She glanced at Ben awkwardly and gave a shrug as if it wasn't any big deal. "We just… ran into each other."

Eagle, blatantly ignoring her attempts to keep things vague, took the opportunity to ask, casually, "So how _did_ he get shot, Alex? The sod won't tell us anything except 'classified'."

Alex swallowed, and suddenly she wasn't in Wolf's kitchen anymore, eating pizza with K-Unit. She was in that room, watching shell-shocked as Ben bleed out on the floor while her godfather explained that he'd been working with Scorpia all along, that he'd –

That he'd –

A hand on her shoulder startled her, and if it hadn't been for Snake's calm voice telling her to drink from the glass in front of her, she might have instinctively attacked. Instead, she obediently took a few swallows of the cool water and felt better.

When she started paying attention to the kitchen again, she found that Wolf was glaring murderously at Eagle. "All right," he growled out, "Neal, out. You've crossed the line."

Before Neal could do anything, Alex felt a rush of guilt for getting them angry at each other and said, quickly, "It's all right. I'm just tired, really, and I ought to get to bed – "

"Stay put," Wolf told her, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. When she brought herself to look him in the eye, she was surprised to see the concern obvious in his eyes. "It's barely past seven."

Snake squeezed her shoulder. "Neal's just put his boot in it again. We'll gag him, if you like."

"It's impressive, really, because those are some massive boots." Ben stretched seemingly carelessly, but the look he pinned on her was warily sympathetic. "Sometimes we're afraid he's going to choke on them."

She gave him a wary smile, unsure herself if the action was real or just for show. Either way, it didn't seem worth it to retreat to her room just yet, especially when she still had pizza left on her plate.

"You know," Neal said, apparently taking this as his cue to say something ridiculous to change the subject, "I've always wanted to look after a girl. I mean, what's the use of all this military training if you can't scare the shit out of some little idiots? Tell me, Kit, do you have any boyfriends we can intimidate?"

Alex reflexively spat out a mouthful of water. "_What?_"

* * *

><p>The next morning, to her relief, followed in much the same vein of passably comfortable interaction. She ate cereal, and Wolf mentioned when he expected to be home, and when she went out with Tom to the cinema after school, she wasn't subjected to any tirades on the subject of her location.<p>

And, far faster than she'd have thought possible, she woke up one morning and found that a week had passed without word from Jack. After school that day, Alex texted Wolf that she'd be late and brushed off Tom's invitation to play football so she could board the tube to the Royal & General Bank. Assistants who'd gotten used to the sporadic appearance of a teenage girl quickly ushered her to Mr. Blunt's office, where she found the man sifting through a stack of paperwork.

Blunt stared at her impassively. "Yes, Ms. Rider?"

"I came about – Jack. She hasn't been reinstated as my guardian yet."

Mrs. Jones slipped into the room with the usual scent of peppermint. Blunt nodded to her amiably before continuing. "You have to understand, Alex, that your special status makes this difficult."

Alex crossed her arms, determined not to let the heads of MI6 intimidate her on this matter. "I thought you said it was going to be _easy_. You said Jack would be back by now."

"Of course, you have to understand that the complaints raised against Ms. Starbright are… problematic, to say the least." Blunt cleared his throat, and Mrs. Jones apparently took that as her cue to take over.

"No one can deny that you haven't undergone injuries, Alex. And with such overwhelming evidence, it's hard to prove your housekeeper _hasn't_ been abusing you."

"Because you lot can't step up and admit it's all your fault," Alex muttered darkly.

"I'm very sorry to hear you're dissatisfied with Mr. San Luca," Blunt continued as if she hadn't said anything. "We could, of course, return you to your temporary lodging – "

She thought of the small, bare cell she'd spent that first night in and shuddered. Though she hadn't been locked in, the room – built for detaining potential terrorists and other threats – made her feel horribly claustrophobic in addition to dredging up memories of the one she'd been given during the ordeal with Scorpia. "No, thanks."

" – Or we could, perhaps, provide you with something to keep your mind off Ms. Starbright's absence."

A sick feeling settled in her stomach. "Have you gone _barmy?_ I'm not doing that anymore. I _told_ you."

Unperturbed, he tidied up his stack of papers and handed them off to Mrs. Jones, who replaced them with a single creamy manila folder. "Of course. If you like, you can return to San Luca's residence immediately. I'm sure the complications to Ms. Starbright's case couldn't delay a conclusion for more than half a year."

"You _bastards_," she spat out.

As always, Alan Blunt remained unaffected by her obvious show of hatred, though she thought Mrs. Jones might have let a flicker of guilt show through. He kept his tone mild, fully knowing that he already had her caught. "Or you could spend two weeks in Paris, partaking of luxury accommodations and posing as a model at a prestigious fashion show."

For a moment, Alex stared at him for a while, wondering if this was some sort of joke. When he showed no signs of pulling out a giant red nose or attacking anyone's eyes with his fingers, she said, flatly, "What's the catch?"

"Jennifer L'Enfant," he continued, unperturbed, "is holding a fashion show as a charity even for her clothing drive. It seems someone has taken offense to her freely giving away expensive clothing to the homeless and therefore issued a threat timed to coincide with the first night of the event."

"So you want me to go in as a model and find out who's trying to kill her," Alex concluded.

"Succinct, as always." She could swear he almost smiled before pushing the folder to her. "We've taken the liberty of booking you several appointments – hair stylists, manicurists, and various consultants." And then, as if he'd suddenly realized he was talking to a teenage girl, he quickly added, "To bring you up to professional standards, you understand."

"I understand." She hefted her schoolbag again with one last icy glare and turned smartly on her heel, heading for the door. "Operation Barbie Alex is a go."

* * *

><p>Before she left the building, however, she made her customary pre-mission stop at Smithers'. Since, unlike almost everyone else from MI6, he had yet to fail her, she could almost look forward to seeing him again. And from the look of things, he wasn't about to disappoint her today either, though she had to admit that the array of items he had laid out for her were a lot more… <em>girly<em> than usual.

Smithers greeted her jovially before getting down to business. "I understand you've been contracted to integrate into the fashion scene. I've taken the liberty of drawing up a few items for you that my research assistant assures me will not look at all out of place on a model." He laid out a necklace for her: silver, twisted into a complicated pattern that reminded her of a four-leaf clover. "This necklace is embedded with a very small camera. You merely need to press this – " he indicated a certain knob in the design, " – and you'll have a very high-quality photograph worthy of any fashion photographer."

He chuckled at his own reference before moving on. "This," he said, offering her a golden watch with a distinctly feminine feel, "is based on a design I've given you before – though, of course, this one tells perfect time. Twisting the fob twice anti-clockwise sends a distress signal to MI6. If you open the face and remove the hands, you'll find they are made of diamond and sharpened to a point that can cut glass.

"Of course," he continued cheerfully, "as always, MI6 has instructed me not to give you weapons. But I've taken the liberty of providing you with a few… defensive measures." He offered her a small cosmetics kit that fit easily in the palm of her hand. "The lipstick can be re-arranged into a small blow gun. The darts are behind the mirror, and contain a powerful sedative that could knock out a professional wrestler in under six seconds." He turned to the last item on the table. "And while this ring may look as harmless as one you might find at a jewelry store, when the pearl is compressed twice for ten seconds each, it becomes a powerful little explosive with a twenty-second fuse."

Before she could sweep the items into her own bag, he produced a pink handbag riddled with small inner pockets. At her questioning look, he laughed. "I was told you would need some sort of handbag. It's bulletproofed, of course."

Alex smiled.

* * *

><p>Unfortunately, her cautiously hopeful mood was utterly ruined when she was accosted on the way out the door and forced into a pair of high heels, <em>just to get used to the feel<em>. Well, the feel was bloody horrific, and she kicked them off viciously as soon as she got inside the door of Wolf's flat.

To make matters worse, Wolf was waiting in the living room to eye her shoes and new purse bemusedly. "What – "

"I have a lot of appointments for the next few days," she told him stiffly. "And on Friday, I'll be leaving for two weeks." Before he could ask any questions, she glared at him murderously and stomped off to her room. "And I _don't_ want to talk about it."


	7. Is In the Eye of the Beholden

And lo, Operation: Barbie Alex is officially kicked off!

* * *

><p>Alex was awoken at five in the morning by a loud, insistent banging on the door. She stumbled out, bleary-eyed and muggy-headed, and despite the steady stream of expletives from the direction of Wolf's room, somehow made it first to the door. A tall woman with an unpleasant twist to her mouth stood in the hall, staring down at Alex as if she were an especially repugnant cockroach.<p>

"You are Alex Rider?" she said.

Alex pointedly did not step aside to allow the woman in, and if she adjusted her stance to something more aggressive, she could be forgiven it. It was, after all, _early_. "Yes."

The woman tapped a watch impatiently and shoved a dress wrapped in clear plastic into her face. "Ms. White. We start in fifteen minutes. Wear this."

Wolf stumbled out of his room, trailing bedclothes and yet somehow still every bit as intimidating as his namesake."_What_ the hell is going on?"

"I think," Alex began, then flicked her gaze down to the designer label on the garment bag, "this is one of those things I didn't want to talk about."

* * *

><p>While Alex was still dazed from sleep, White dragged her to an apartment covered in cosmetics, hair tools, clothes, and accessories and sat her down in front of a mirror. Alex couldn't help but compare it to Mrs. Webber's more low-key style. Either MI6 was a lot flashier when it came to in-depth disguises, or just Ms. White.<p>

Speaking of which, the woman turned an unreasonably bright light on her. "Oh, dear _god_ in heaven." Alex bristled, but before she could defend herself, White grabbed her hands. "A biter. _A biter._ _What_ the hell were you thinking? I see I'll have to prioritize – and _where_ did you get that god-awful haircut? You look like a refugee."

"Um." Somehow, despite her near-constant tugging, her hands were still trapped in Ms. White's. "That was the idea. Mrs. Webber –" She stopped herself suddenly and decided to proceed with caution, since she wasn't sure if White was MI6 or just someone they'd brought in. "It was part of a play I was in." The woman hummed her disapproval and muttered about split ends and hydration and shaping and highlights and all those things Alex didn't generally encounter unless she and Jack were having a girls' night.

She and Jack, who she still wasn't allowed to talk to. She swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat. "Is this going to take long? I have classes in a few hours."

Something told her the loud snort White gave didn't bode well for her education.

* * *

><p>"<em>Oh my god<em>," Tom said, eyes wide and staring. "What happened to you?"

Alex uncomfortably tugged the hemline of her skirt down. It wasn't that she didn't wear skirts – she had several in her closet and she'd always enjoyed wearing them, but they weren't… well. _Floral_. Apparently, this was one of the things she had to get comfortable wearing if people were going to believe she'd ever modelled before, along with the extremely strappy heels and butterfly hair clip. It wasn't _bad_ so much as _conspicuous_, and there were enough rumours about her floating around Brookland without _this_ to add to the pile. "The Royal and General happened."

Tom nodded as if this explained everything. "So are you on a mission right now?"

"No, this is just prep." James Adair from next year had frozen in place, openly staring at her. She tried not to notice. "I don't have to leave 'til the end of the week."

"Right." Tom offered up what she was sure he considered to be a secretive smile. "At least you're not missing school yet."

She smiled back. Someone up ahead gestured wildly in her direction to his mates, and the smile turned to a wince. "I can't wait to see what they make of _this_."

"It can't be much worse than the stories about you being a drug addict or a gang member, right?" Tom smiled at her hopefully. She was fairly certain she was grimacing at this point. "I'll see you after, right?"

"Sorry, I've got appointments. More pre-mission prep." She glanced at him and saw the words _can I help_ just starting to form. "It's mostly primping. There's nothing you could do, and anyway, you'd be bored to tears."

"Better than listening to tears," Tom muttered, but quickly straightened out his shoulders and tilted his head up. "It's all right, we can do it some other time."

"Yeah," Alex echoed. "Some other time."

_Bloody_ MI6.

* * *

><p>"<em>Oh my god<em>," Eagle said, and Alex would have had a moment of déjà vu if he weren't also clutching at Fox's arms in a grotesque parody of being overcome by emotion. "Our little Kit, all grown up and wearing _make-up_!"

She tore a cushion off the nearest chair and threw it at his head. It missed. "_What_ are you doing here?"

"Well," Eagle said, "Ben is here because James asked him to sit with you in case your beauty consultant turned out to be a mass-murdering megalomaniac or something, and I'm here because I'd be remiss in my duties if I didn't oversee your transformation from a little baby Kit into a beautiful, beautiful butterfly – "

Ben snorted. "Sorry about him. My car's in the shop, and I had to get a ride from somewhere."

"And when people think of a generous, handsome chauffeur, they think of me," Eagle agreed.

"Fine," Alex said, throwing up her hands in surrender. "Stay. Put your feet on the table. Make paint balloons and put a mural on the walls, if you like. Just keep quiet, because I only have an hour until Ms. White shows, and if I don't get enough of my work done by then, I'll be up all night."

"Did you want help?" Eagle offered, looking all too eager at the thought of getting to make more quips at her expense under the guise of being a responsible adult. "Because I got top marks in most of my – "

Ben slapped a hand over Eagle's mouth and gave her a thumbs-up with the other.

"Thanks," Alex said sincerely before running on to her room.

* * *

><p>When Wolf returned to his flat later in the evening, he found Fox unconcernedly reading a battered copy of a Mark Twain novel on one end of his sofa while Eagle sat hunched in on himself miserably on the other. Indistinct voices filtered in from the kitchen – Kit and that other woman, the one who'd stormed in at five in the morning.<p>

He cleared his throat. "Going well?"

Neal all but launched himself out of his seat. "I have heard things, James. _I have heard things._ Things I never wanted to know, things like –" He shuddered. "_Bikini line_."

Fox flipped a page. "I told him he shouldn't crowd them."

"We were _meant_ to be supervising." Neal glanced in the direction of the kitchen and gave a theatrical shudder. "That woman worries me. I'm not sure she should be allowed near sharp objects."

"Right." Wolf paused, trying to work out if he should intervene or not. He knew this was part of whatever it was Kit did for the MI6 and they probably wouldn't take too well to an interruption, but leaving Alex at the mercy of a stranger with beauty products didn't seem like the responsible thing to do. It couldn't hurt to get a drink or something, get an idea of the mood in the room.

* * *

><p>Alex could practically feel her mind trying to turn itself off from several hours of being lectured on her skin care, hair care, nail care, face care, and every other <em>care<em> that could possibly be applied to her body. Her hands had cramped up from trying to take notes so she could recite everything back to Ms. White the next morning, when she was scheduled continue this nightmare of an image transformation.

It was almost a relief, seeing Wolf stick his head into the room. "Everything all right?" he asked, doing his best to sound interested and not just gruff.

Ms. White waved a hand at him dismissively. "Yes, yes. Go."

He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. "I wasn't asking you."

Alex snapped her head up in surprise, but Ms. White didn't even seem to consider letting her into the conversation. "We are fine. We have a large amount of work to do and not nearly enough time to accomplish it, and we would work much better in isolation."

To Alex's amusement, Wolf turned a formidable glare on the fashion consultant. "Alex," he said, without taking his eyes off White, "you hungry?"

Alex glanced at White out of the corner of her eye. She had no doubt that every bit of the woman's ire would be redirected towards her the minute Wolf left them alone, but the truth of it was that she _was_ hungry. White hadn't given her any time that morning for breakfast, and lunch was feeling a long way away. "Sort of."

"I'm sure you won't mind leaving off, then," Wolf told Ms. White firmly in the tones of someone who would accept no arguments.

White huffed, sensing that her reign of terror was about to be ended early. "I'm certain it won't hurt her to wait just a while longer – "

"Alex is under orders from her doctor not to miss any meals," Wolf said flatly. "Good night."

As Alex watched, White swept up her impressive collection of accessories into her arms before turning to Alex. "Don't forget," she said icily, "we've an appointment tomorrow morning."

The door slammed with much more force than necessary. Alex stared down at the table."You didn't – have to do that. With her." She shrugged, awkwardly. "I was all right."

"It wasn't a problem." She risked a glance up and found him eyeing her thoughtfully. "It was true, anyway. Micheal's got me under orders to make sure you eat." She suppressed a wince at the potential difficulties that would bring, and his lips twitched. "I'm not going to stare at you eating or anything. I just thought maybe you could use the back-up."

"Right." She gave him a tentative smile. "Thanks."

"No problem."

* * *

><p>The rest of the evening passed in what could almost be called <em>normalcy<em>. They ordered takeaway, and Wolf kicked ben and Neal out early so Alex actually had time to finish her homework and go to bed at a decent hour. Her rude awakening the next morning was no less unwelcome than it had been the time before, but at least she managed a little breakfast before being dragged out the door.

School could almost have been called a relief if it weren't for the classmates constantly chattering on about her whenever she was in the room. Once, she tried asking Tom what rumour they'd come up with this time, but when he abruptly turned red and bolted to the loo, she decided maybe she'd be better off not knowing. With a day like that behind her, she could only muster a sour greeting for Ben when she got into the flat and found him camped out again.

If White had been difficult before, she'd somehow managed to become downright unbearable overnight. To preserve her last few shreds of patience, Alex let her mind wander onto the topic of what she could do if she needed a lot of mobility when wearing something as limiting as the dresses she was shown. Just as she thought she might have a solution, White grabbed her arm painfully and hissed out an angry "Are you c_ompletely _incompetent?"

Alex was stunned, feeling the anger bubbling up in her throat and choking her. "Wh-_what?_"

"This!" White stood, yanking Alex's arm along with her. "_This_ is why I don't work with children! They have no sense of _priority!_ It's all sugar sodas and daydreaming, never a work ethic!"

The grip on her arm was strong, but not unbreakable. She manoeuvred out of White's grasp with a neatly executed twist, just in time for Ben to enter the room, alerted by White's unsubtle shouting. Alex didn't have to bother looking at her arm to know that it would bruise; she could tell by the feel of it. "I think there might be another reason you're not allowed to work with children," she muttered.

It only took Ben a moment to work out what had happened. "Get out."

White's face twisted into a pantomime of outrage. "With _pleasure_. You have no idea how difficult it is for me to work such an unmannered, unreasonable and frankly _unforgivable_ child!"

Ben's eyes were like ice. "_Get out_."

The minute Alex heard the door slam shut for the second time in as many evenings, she breathed out a sigh. It wasn't as if she hadn't faced more unpleasant people in her time with the MI6, but something about having one of them in a space where she was supposed to _live_ just went badly with her.

Ben took a few breaths of his own before turning to her, visibly softening his approach. "All right?"

She swallowed. "Yeah. I'm –" Quickly, before they could get into a conversation, she grabbed her schoolbag and slung it over her shoulder. "I have to go to the Bank."

* * *

><p>Alan Blunt was halfway through an excellent cup of a tea and a scintillating conversation with Mrs. Jones regarding the status of a possible double agent in Spain when Alex Rider marched into the room. He set his cup down, glancing in her direction with seeming calm. "Can I do something for you –"<p>

"_Never_ do something like that to me again," Alex hissed out, hands clenched into fists at her side. "All right? Or I won't work with you at all, no matter what blackmail you manage to pull out."

"I have no idea what you're talking about – "

Alex pulled up her sleeve to reveal a rather ugly bruise on her arm. "I think I worked out why you assured me Ms. White would be especially helpful when it came to disguising my scars. She had a lot of practice." She tugged the cloth down again. "I think I'll figure out how to pass as a model from my own for now on." Just as quickly as she'd appeared, Alex stormed back out the door into the general offices of MI6.

Blunt glanced at Mrs. Jones, who was still somewhat in shock from their young visitor, and gave a delicate cough. "Is it just me," he mused, "or do these chats get earlier every mission?"


	8. A Barbie Girl in a Barbie World

So, uh. Well, you'll see. But _man_, I apparently fail at accurately predicting Alex's responses to situations until I'm actively writing them.

* * *

><p>Although Alex had informed MI6 under no uncertain terms that she would not be working with Mrs. White again, there were still a number of appointments she had to keep to prepare for the mission. She was almost grateful for the consultations that took her away from Wolf's for so long so she didn't have to talk to any of K-Unit about what had happened with White. Ms. White's attitude wasn't anything new to her; she'd long since been stripped of the notion that adults could be trusted <em>just because.<em> More often than not, they couldn't be trusted at all.

And it _wasn't_ a big deal, honestly. Much worse things had happened to her. Really, the only truly unsettling thing about the affair was that it had happened where she _lived_. So she kept her head down and stayed away from the flat as much as she could, and when she couldn't, she ducked into her room immediately and said things like _I've got coursework to do_ and _yeah, I'm fine, I'm just really tired_.

And then it was Friday. Alex got up early to meet the driver that would take her to the airport. Wolf woke up, too, but she hedged her way out of a proper conversation by saying she had to leave as soon as possible. Most of her things would be provided on arrival; all she had to bring were the gadgets Smithers had given her and a few minor comfort and toiletry items, which made for light travelling.

To her surprise, her flight had been paid for by L'Enfant, not MI6, which meant she was seated in first class. One of the attendants kept circling back around to smile at her and offer her all sorts of things – sodas, snacks, headphones to listen to the radio – probably trying to be extra nice to the teenager travelling alone. Alex accepted a refill of her Coke from the flight attendant and flicked on her iPod. Her talent agent – or, rather, the other undercover operative assigned to this case would meet her at their destination, and then she'd be immersed in the world of high fashion for the next fourteen days.

* * *

><p>The agent wore stilettos and business suits and somehow managed to whisk Alex off before she even had a moment to orient herself. They rode in an expensive car with a professional driver, but there was a screen door between the driver and the passengers, so she guessed they were allowed to talk freely.<p>

"You'll know me as Mélise," the agent said. She was Asian, but spoke in Quebec-accented French. "I know your identity already, so you needn't waste time reminding me." She pronounced the words clinically, as if no part of their cover story particularly interested her. "Since you're meant to be new to modelling, we needn't pretend to know each other well."

She paused, giving Alex the impression she was choosing her next words very carefully. "I would rather we stayed that way. Apart from these two weeks, it's unlikely we'll ever be working with each other again. Ours is not a business for friendships, and I see no need to use the time we could be more usefully applying elsewhere."

Alex was tempted to point out that part of the idea of intelligence work was meant to be cultivating relationships with the people who knew what you wanted, but Mélise had turned to the window, clearly signalling that the conversation was over. Alex sighed and dug out her iPod again. Fourteen days with _this_ as her back-up.

Maybe she would get lucky. Maybe the terrorists would strike early.

* * *

><p>Unfortunately, it seemed that almost everyone she came in contact with shared Mélise's opinion on relationships. The other models were almost all older than her, and even the ones her age tended to ignore her. They weren't rude about it. If she tried to strike up a conversation, they'd talk with her, but with an air of vague politeness that made it clear they weren't interested in anything she had to say.<p>

So, in the scant time she had in between publicity shoots and practices and fittings, she occupied herself with investigating. And in her time poking about, she discovered that two of the photographers were having a feud over each others' technique, one of the wardrobe assistants was having an affair, and at least five of the other models had serious problems with eating disorders. Mostly, though, she found out that if she wore an ordinary pair of jeans, a black shirt, and a cap, she could sneak in wherever she wanted without notice, as long as she was carrying a cup of coffee or a radio nicked from one of the real assistants.

On the fifth day, though, she overheard one of the models – Vanessa or Contessa or something like that - on her mobile talking about something important happening that night and how she would make sure no one would notice. The conversation went on for about five minutes, and although Alex never got a clear idea of what Vanessa was planning, she was willing to bet it had something to do with the threats to L'Enfant.

For the rest of the day, Alex shadowed the older model, trying to get her hands on her room key. It wasn't until late afternoon that she finally saw her chance: Vanessa's bag was temporarily left unguarded, just long enough for her to root out the key. It was almost torture, waiting until she could slip away to use it, but hopefully her patience would pay off with a lead.

* * *

><p>Except, there wasn't anything. Alex stood in the middle of Vanessa's suite and ran a hand through her hair, trying to think up <em>any<em> place she hadn't already looked. The model's computer was password protected, so she couldn't go looking through her files. And despite thoroughly poking in every place she could think of, there just wasn't anything out of the ordinary in the rooms. Alex had just decided she might as well give up and head out to bed when she heard someone fumbling with the lock.

And froze. There weren't many places in the room she could hide. The closet was full, the bathroom too much of a risk, and her search of the room hadn't revealed any convenient pieces of furniture placed diagonal to the room's corner for her to hide behind. All she had – all she _really_ had – was the old standby: under the bed.

She dove under just as the door came open. Someone stumbled in, and Vanessa laughed, the usually crisp tones of her voice slurred by alcohol. Without sight, Alex couldn't tell who the other person was, but she heard someone kick off a pair of shoes as the remaining pair clicked towards the bedroom. She flinched as the mattress suddenly dipped overhead – one of them had sat down. The other occupant gave a giggle and murmured something low and seductive, and the mattress dipped down again and just like that, Alex realized what was going on.

For the next couple hours, she thought furiously about things like how much she loved playing football and who could be planning to hurt Jennifer L'Enfant and what sort of jokes Jack would make about this if they ever got to talk again, but mostly she thought about how much she did not want to be there, underneath the bed while Vanessa and her (girlfriend? wife?) had sex. Some clinical, far-off portion of her mind noted that Vanessa seemed to be very good at – _whatever_, exactly, she was doing, if the sounds her companion was making were anything to go by. Alex fought down a hysterical giggle.

After what felt like ages, the moans and screams finally died off to the steady, even breathing of sleep, and Alex judged it safe to crawl out from under the bed. She went nearly light-headed with relief once she was standing safely in the hallway. And in her room, she stripped off her clothes and headed straight for the bathroom for a long shower to wash away the past couple hours.

After a minute of staring at the temperature knob, she turned it to cold.

* * *

><p>After a few hours of confused and generally restless sleep, Alex found Mélise drinking coffee in her sitting room. She raised a delicate eyebrow at Alex's sleep-mussed state. "Jennifer L'Enfant is no longer in danger."<p>

Alex felt vaguely as if she'd just been hit over the head on top of being made an unwilling voyeur. "What?"

"The men responsible for the threats were taken into custody last night," Mélise said. "The authorities have obtained a confession. There's nothing left for us to do."

Her head swam. It didn't make sense, and yet here Mélise was, telling her they didn't have a job to do anymore. "So we're... free to go, then?"

The woman gave a soft snort. "Hardly. We're to finish out the show. It would be far too suspicious if you pulled out _now_."

"Right, of course," she said, and hoped it didn't sound as faint to Mélise as it did to her own ears.

* * *

><p>For the rest of her two weeks as an undercover model, nothing happened. And on the way to the airport, nothing happened. And on the plane, even though she was absolutely <em>sure<em> it would be hijacked by an accomplice MI6 had failed to find or a terrorist or an old woman with a pocketknife, _something_, nothing happened.

It was unnerving. Over the last few days, a constant ball of confusion and suspicion had settled in her stomach, making it difficult to eat. She found herself eyeing everything as a probable death trap, because one of the few things Alex had started to take for granted about working with the MI6 was that it was _always_ more dangerous than it seemed. It was never this easy. She was starting to feel as if she was in shock, half of her dulled and confused and the other half hyper-aware and ready to jump at every little shadow.

When she landed, she wasn't asked to the offices of the Royal & General for a debriefing – of course, since she hadn't been involved with the arrests, there wasn't anything _to_ debrief. In some distant, logical _(sane)_ piece of her mind, she knew there was nothing between her and a quiet night overcoming her jet lag, but she still expected _something_ to happen. Someone MI6 had arranged drove her back to Wolf's flat; no one tried to chase them or drive them off the road. She left the car and walked up to the building; she wasn't immediately drugged and kidnapped. She stood outside Wolf's flat for almost a minute before he let her in; there weren't any snipers hidden out, waiting for her return.

And even though nothing horrible had happened, Wolf was still looking at her as warily as if something _had_. "Alex?"

No one suddenly appeared with a knife to stab either of them. She didn't discover a madman with a weapon directing Wolf's movements to trick her into the flat. The only thing that followed her inside was the look of what could almost be called concern in her temporary guardian's eyes. And she couldn't bring herself to do anything about that. "I'm going to my room."

Wolf frowned. "Are you –"

"I'm fine," she said. Her words came out flat, mechanical. "Just really tired." And while he watched, she walked off and fell onto her bed.

It didn't even collapse under her.


	9. Passing Phantoms in the Night

Is it just me, or are chapters getting longer and longer these days? Why, in _my_ time, we got 1000 word chapters, and we were _grateful_ for it!

Just kidding, pff. But yeah, this is an inexplicably long one.

* * *

><p>Despite what she'd told Wolf, Alex hadn't really wanted to sleep. She was tired, and had been tired for the past several days, but somewhere underneath it all she thrummed with restless energy. For almost three hours she lay stretched on her bed, just searching over her memories of the past fourteen days for some small, crucial detail that would reveal a fault in MI6's handling. Several times, she tried to put the whole thing out of her mind – MI6 knew what they were doing, didn't they? It was ridiculous to think that <em>every<em> time she was called out to the field would be painfully life or death. Finally, she succeeded by falling into a restless sleep.

Only to wake less than two hours later, soaked in a cold sweat and panting from some imagined horror of her mind. She had to sit still for a few minutes, just breathing slowly and sorting out the events of her dream from reality. It had become a familiar ritual in the past week, with certain specific questions designed to bring herself back to reality. Had she been shot? She'd only been shot once, in the chest. Had someone died? She reminded herself of the last times she'd seen the people she cared for who were still alive, still breathing. If her dream had involved pain, she often had to run her hands over her skin, searching for breaks and bruises.

This time she'd been lucky. The memories faded quickly from her thoughts, leaving her with only an exhausting sense of unfocused terror. While she was undercover, she'd developed a routine of nightly walks to tire herself out until she felt confident enough to sleep again. Now that she was back home – or close to it, at least – she had to improvise. She changed into a pair of dark jeans and black shirt and crept out of her room, quietly so as not to wake Wolf.

Thanks, in part, to the amount of training and experience she'd gained at MI6, slipping out of the flat without alerting Wolf was fairly easy. Once outside, she knew where she had to go. Although she received several odd looks from the few others still out and about for being so young and out so late, the hour proved no great obstacle to her.

Actually _reaching_ her target was another matter, though. Alex stood quietly in the deep shadows cast by a set of decorative shrubbery, surveying her options. The room she wanted was on the second floor, which wasn't too difficult, but she didn't have any rope or other tools for climbing it straight on. The actual wall was too smooth to climb and would probably wake the whole household, beside. There was a tree close enough, if she jumped from one of the branches to the little ledge outside the second-storey window, and, after a moment's consideration, she began to climb it, using the thankfully ample moonlight to search out hand- and foot-holds.

The tree was rough to the touch, which provided friction, but difficult to climb, with only a few branches strong enough to take her weight. She wished she'd thought to bring night vision glasses or gloves for a better grip, but once begun, she was determined to finish. She managed to bring herself within reasonable distance of the branch she needed, but it was too thin for her to try to crawling across. Instead, she got a firm grip on it with her hands and gave up her footholds so her lower body was dangling in mid-air. There were only a couple feet to go from there, and she took it hand by hand, using her body for momentum forward. Once she judged herself close enough, she swung herself forward and let go, landing neatly on the ledge just as she had planned.

The light went on almost immediately. Alex dropped into a crouch, bracing herself for the window to open. Too late, she realized that if just _anyone_ had happened to hear her, she would probably be done up for trespassing. A hand flicked open the curtains.

Tom Harris gaped out the window at her for almost a full minute before he finally threw open the window for her to climb through. "_Alex_?" he hissed out, half-panicked and angry. "What are you doing? When did you get back? And –" He leaned over the edge of the window, suddenly realizing that there wasn't any clear way she could have climbed to his window. "How did you even get up here?"

She grinned at him, feeling light and cocksure. It was a nice change from the tight paranoia of the last week. "I climbed the tree."

"_Why?_" His voice echoed out in the room, too loud. He immediately dropped it so they wouldn't wake anyone. "You could've just seen me tomorrow. Did something." He swallowed. "Did something happen?"

"Couldn't sleep," she said. She hadn't told him her assignment was only in Paris; he'd assume she was just suffering from jet lag. "I had to get out of the flat."

Tom sighed, but with a wry twist of affection. "You're barmy, you know that."

Alex grinned at him. "I get it from Jack."

Tom snorted. "She's not nearly as bad as you are. Doesn't sneak in people's windows when they're trying to sleep, for one."

"As if you never dreamed of having a girl sneak into your room in the middle of the night," Alex scoffed. "This is a fantasy come true, and you know it."

"Well, _obviously_. But in those fantasies, it wasn't my barmy best friend looking for some way to get over her jet lag." He pinned her with a _look_, exasperated and exhausted all at once. She went quiet, just looking at him thoughtfully, until he said, "_What?_"

She licked her lips nervously and, before she could think better of it, kissed him.

He didn't react at first, too shocked and tired to understand what was happening, but then his hand brushed her cheek lightly, and she felt a surge of affection for him. The kiss felt nice, but she wasn't sure if it felt nice like it was s_upposed_ to feel nice or just a lesser sort of nice to be expected from kissing your best mate in the middle of the night.

Tom pulled away first, though his eyes stayed on her lips in a sort of dazed way for a bit – and all right, that was a little flattering – before he seemed to snap back into focus. "Alex." He said, warily. "What are you doing?"

She shoved her hands in her pockets, shoulders hunched up uncomfortably. "I wanted to. I wanted to – see what it was like." For a moment, she was tempted to chew her nails, but they were still coated in whatever disgusting material White had used to create the fake edges, so she worried her bottom lip instead. "And I thought, it should be you."

"All right," Tom said, choosing his words with care. "But we decided ages ago, that if we were going to – that we weren't going to get all into the confused romantic friendship thing."

"We don't have to," Alex said quickly. "That was – I just wanted to see what it was like."

Tom let out a breath, looking tentatively relieved. "So are you going to tell me what happened, or are we just going to snog all night?"

Alex snatched up a pillow to hit him with. "You _wish_, you berk." She straightened up a bit and crossed her legs under herself as she considered what she could tell him. She'd planned on keeping most of the mission to herself, but it was gone three in the morning now and she'd just climbed in her best friend's window and kissed him, so nothing seemed particularly inappropriate at this point. "I was investigating this room, right, and I heard the owner coming in and had to hide under the bed..."

* * *

><p>She slipped back into Wolf's flat at four thirty and managed a couple hours' sleep before being woken by the smell of coffee and eggs. Wolf was cooking breakfast, which – she remembered vaguely from Wolf's culinary aptitude during training – probably wouldn't be half-bad. Though the smell of the eggs turned her stomach unpleasantly, her reaction had more to do with the knot of tension that had lived in there for the past week than the quality of Wolf's cooking.<p>

Speaking of which, Wolf waited until she was safely settled at the table with a plate of eggs and toast before seating himself at the opposite side of the table. "So," he said, quietly. "How did it go?"

She tensed, feeling the tightening in her muscles spread out over her body. It was ridiculous, really, sitting here while the man who had spent their previous quality time together sabotaging her training played concerned adult. She didn't even try to clamp down on the sharp rush of suspicion that his attempt at concern was just an act to coax out information. "You know I can't tell you that," she said, somewhat unkindly. She ought to have felt bad for it, she knew, but with only a few hours' sleep and the lingering unease from Paris, she couldn't bring herself to bother.

"You can if it pertains to your health." Wolf folded his arms on the table, showing a calmer, more human sense of command that she'd only glimpsed before when he was with K-Unit; almost gentle, but just as unwavering.

"I'm fine," she said, and quickly switched tactics before he could try getting into details. "And I have a football practice I'm going to be late for if I don't leave soon."

"The rest of the unit is due to show tonight," he said, watching her face carefully. "And Neal mentioned something about a welcome back surprise, so you have my permission to start building barricades."

Alex thought quickly. "Tom and I made plans for after, but I'll be round for dinner."

"That's fine." Before he could add anything, she swallowed the last mouthful of milk and chucked the rest of her breakfast in the bin, hurrying out as quickly as she could.

* * *

><p>Though Tom greeted her with a smile and no more mention of last night than a vague reference to late night study sessions, she knew from the start that getting through the day was going to be difficult. Her nerves were painfully frayed to begin with, and the rest of the team was clearly tired of her sudden, mysterious illnesses leaving them short a player. Alex was almost surprised it took her to the end of the practice to snap. Tom touched her shoulder to get her attention while she was packing up, and she quickly spun around, twisting his arm into an immobilizing hold that she dropped almost as quickly as she'd adopted. She stammered out an apology, glancing quickly around to check if anyone had noticed. Luckily, no one was looking their way at the time.<p>

"You aren't half-serious when you do that," Tom said, rubbing his arm ruefully. "Next time, I bet you'll have my arm off."

She flushed. "Sorry."

"It's fine. Just," he said, looking at her with a serious expression on his young face, "you'd tell me, right? If there was something..."

She flashed him a grin. "Course. Look, I've got to go somewhere. I'll see you tomorrow."

* * *

><p>The Royal &amp; General Bank swarmed over with customers, but it didn't take her long to be ushered to the MI6 offices. Mr. Blunt was the only one there this time; Alex briefly wondered if Mrs. Jones had taken the day off to visit her family.<p>

He glanced at her, calm and untouchable as ever. But then, she had no doubts that he'd been forewarned about her visit long before she even made it to his office door. "Yes, Alex?"

"I wanted to know when I'm moving back in," she said. "With Jack."

He raised his eyebrows at her. "We discussed this. Ms. Starbright's case is difficult, as you know, because there is a large body of evidence that suggests – "

She cut in quickly rather than listen to another lecture on things she was intimately familiar with already. "I don't understand."

"I don't have a specific date for you yet, Alex. But if you'll be patient, I'm sure it can't take much longer."

"You _told_ me." Alex's words were like ice. "You said if I took on your assignment, I'd be allowed to go back to living with her."

"And you will." He sighed, showing a moment of rare tiredness. "Eventually."

"_Screw you_." Alex bunched her hands into fists, held tightly at her sides. "_Screw you_ and your incentives. I should've known you wouldn't follow through."

Before he had a chance to placate her, Alex stormed out of his office, taking out a bewildered aide carrying files on her way. Alan Blunt calmly returned to his usual work.

Outside the bank, a car started up loudly, and Alex instinctively threw herself against the wall in a defensive crouch at the loud noise. When nothing happened, she straightened up, firmly ignoring the looks the other pedestrians gave her, and walked off.

* * *

><p>K-Unit had already assembled in Wolf's flat and was partway through a meal of Chinese takeaway when Alex let herself in. Eagle offered her a broad grin the moment she stepped in that made her wince as she suddenly remembered Wolf's warning from earlier.<p>

"Kit!" he called out gleefully. "We've got something for you. Have a look on the refrigerator."

For a moment, Alex considered just walking off and leaving Eagle and his surprise to hell, but decided she'd just as well get it over with. On the fridge was a collage of photos she recognized, products of the photo shoots she'd participated in during her short tenure as a model.

Most of K-Unit had stayed in the living area, but Eagle had followed her in, stopping just behind her. "Our little girl," he said by way of explanation, wiping away an invisible tear. "All grown up."

Her jaw tightened, but she didn't say anything. Instead, she ripped all the pictures from the fridge and stuffed them in the rubbish bin. "Look," she told him, voice low and almost threatening, "what happens to me on assignment is none of your business, so just – _stop bringing it up._" With that, she turned on her heel and headed for her room, the door shutting behind her with a satisfying thud.

Eagle was left behind, staring at her in bewilderment and trying to work out what had just happened.

* * *

><p>That night, she woke up from yet another nightmare, this time featuring K-Unit and Tom on Air Force One with Damian Cray. She'd been shot in the chest and forced to watch helplessly as the madman took out everyone else, one by one.<p>

This time, the memories didn't fade. It took less time to reach Tom's house and crawl in his window now that she knew the technique, and he just sighed at her tiredly.

"You'd tell me, though," he repeated, "right?"

She looked him in the eye. "Yeah."

* * *

><p>The second full day back was, if she were pressed to be truthful, even worse. Wolf was acting oddly interested in her plans, asking her a lot of questions and constantly wandering into her room about one thing or another. When she escaped to the Harrises', she kept catching Tom staring at her as if she were some wild animal likely to go off at any minute, and on the way she was nearly hit by a car when she spotted a flash of light on the street that reminded her of a sniper rifle.<p>

That night, she pulled herself out of a dream filled with faceless surgeons cutting her apart bit by bit to stumble into clothing and head for Tom's house for the third night in a row. This time, he was waiting up for her with a cup of hot chocolate at the ready.

"You know, I'm going to fail my GCSEs if you're always keeping me up at night," he said, but with a tired smile to show he didn't really mind. "And I can't even brag about what we've been doing to all my mates."

"Mates?" She snorted. "What, like me? Good one, Harris. I'd know you were lying."

He grinned at her over the rim of his mug. "I don't know, there was that one kiss – "

She pointed her spoon at him mock-threateningly. "Never threaten to reveal a spy's secrets," she said. "Or you'll find that everyone you meet knows about that time you broke your arm and got so high from the painkillers that you wandered out your house in just your boxers – "

"All right!" Tom threw his hands up in surrender. "Point taken."

Alex grinned.

* * *

><p>Monday came, with the painful promise of the school day. Constantly disappearing for weeks at a time was reflecting badly on her work, and keeping up grew increasingly difficult with every extra bit of time she missed. On top of that, it was difficult to keep her attention focused. She was tired but jumpy; she even flinched when a girl to her right dropped her textbook, and one of her more unkind classmates purposefully dropped several books at once to make her repeat the gesture.<p>

"Oops," he said, giving her a smirk when she all but dove under her desk for cover.

A few of her classmates tittered, and she buried herself in the Pythagorean Theorem, ignoring them and, by association, the way Tom stared at her, biting his bottom lip in worried concentration.

* * *

><p>The next day, Tom set out for Alex's new address. He knew she had an appointment with the maths teacher to talk about playing catch-up, which meant she would be occupied for at least long enough for him to enact his plan. He'd been there once before when her SAS guardian wasn't there, and he could only hope he'd remembered the location properly.<p>

The door opened after his fourth knock, revealing a formidably well-muscled man only a little bit taller than Tom himself. All of the sudden, he wasn't sure how good an idea coming here had been, but he couldn't back down now. "Are you W- Mr. San Luca?"

"Yeah," the man said, and Tom absently noted an accent to his English. "Who the hell are you?"

Another voice came from inside the flat, sounding much less foreboding than Wolf's had been. "Are we terrifying the visitors now? Because if we are, I'll need some time to summon all the demons of hell and put them on standby."

Tom swallowed. "I'm one of Alex's mates. Her best mate," he corrected. "We've known each other for ages, and I know she's a spy, and – could I come in for a moment?"

The man's eyes flashed terrifyingly at the word _spy_, but another man stepped into sigh and said, with a soft Scottish brogue, "Let him in, James."

In short order, Tom was settled onto an armchair, facing a group of four men he guessed to be Alex's unit. As a reality, it was far more intimidating than he'd expected, but he was here for a reason and couldn't let himself be deterred. He took a deep breath. "It's about Alex. She's been acting..." He took a moment to work out what he could tell them about her without telling _on_ her. "...Weird."

"Weird." The man who'd threatened hellish abominations earlier – Eagle, Tom guessed from Alex's descriptions – said. "Well, we're saved. Alex is acting _weird_."

"_Neal_," the Scotsman hissed, before turning a thoughtful gaze back on Tom. "Weird how, exactly?"

"Well." Tom shifted uncomfortably, unsure if telling them everything was really a good idea. He would have preferred to talk to Jack, but he didn't know where she was, and anyway, K-Unit had been assigned to look after Alex. He knew she'd had problems with Mi6 as a whole and this unit in particular in the past, but he had to trust that they would keep her best interests in mind. "Sort of – jumpy. Not eating a lot..." He swallowed. "Not sleeping at night."

The last one – Coyote or Fox or something like that – leaned forward, eyeing him intently. "She told you that?"

"Well," he shifted uncomfortably. "Not exactly."

Wolf crossed his arms. "Then how do you know?"

Tom squirmed even harder under the combined stares of the SAS. "She's been – visiting me. At night. To talk," he added quickly, because he _really_ didn't like the near-murderous glare Wolf had just fixed on him. "She's never done that before, but she's been showing at my window every night since she got back, and, I mean, it's not like I can just leave her out there. But it's weird, and I sort of thought that maybe." He shrugged uncomfortably. "Maybe you knew something, or could do something."

Fox sat back heavily as the Scotsman (some sort of snake – Viper?) gave a quiet, pained sigh. "Well," Fox said, "at least we know we were on track."

"That's all well and good," Eagle said, "but what are we meant to _do_?"

Wolf opened his mouth to reply, but was beat to it by the sound of a soft voice asking "What do we do about what?"

Alex stood in the doorway, face creased in confusion as she took in the sight of the five of them talking together. "What's going on?"


	10. Under the Twinkle of a Fading Star

So I started reading _Scorpia Rising_.

...

What. The. Fuck. I have had serious issues with how Jack handles Alex, but I never expected her to go "oh hey, Alex, since it's been a whole four months since you were last in the hospital and Mi6 _promises _not to use you anymore, I, the only adult figure you have left in your life that you actually trust, am going to leave you and go back to America, mkay?"

Um, anyway, back to your regularly scheduled chapter.

* * *

><p>Although Alex couldn't lay claim to being any teachers' favourites, she left Brookland that afternoon with at least high hopes, if not high spirits. Her two weeks in Paris had only barely set her back, and with the extra work and help her maths teacher had been careful to give her, Alex was fairly confident she'd catch up in no time. Since Tom wasn't about when she emerged from the staff offices, she headed directly back to the loft, hoping for a quiet day in, free of the jittery paranoia that had been plaguing her for the past weeks.<p>

It all came back full force when she nudged open the door and heard the voices from inside. After a moment, she identified the speaker as Ben. _"Well_," he was saying, _"at least we know we were on track."_

Eagle started talking as she edged forward, applying her training to remaining as silent as possible. _"That's all well and good, but what are we meant to do?"_ Her plan had been to slip in quietly and let them keep talking, but all thoughts of quiet eavesdropping went out the window the moment she spotted Tom sitting on the sofa with his every pore radiating discomfort.

Sheer confusion clouded her senses. She stepped forward in a daze. "What do we do about what?" Her gaze landed on each of them in turn, stopping at Tom. He swallowed and didn't meet her eyes. "What's going on?"

Snake spoke first. "Maybe you should have a seat." She could tell he was taking care to regulate his voice into calm, non-threatening tones; it had the opposite effect on her, sending a sharp wave of nerves straight to her heart.

However subtle, remaining on her feet would give her the psychological advantage. Alex spoke to Snake but fixed her eyes on Tom, counting on him to give her some clue of what was happening. "I'd rather stand."

Wolf was staring at her with a look on his face that was almost pained. "Take the damn seat."

Her fingers tightened around the strap of her school bag. "Just tell me what's going on."

Fox leaned forward as if he were about to stand. "Maybe Tom should leave – "

"Why is Tom _here_?" Without meaning to, her voice ascended a few harsh notes. "Just _tell_ me!"

"You need to tell us what happened on that assignment of yours."

"You don't have the clearance – "

"Bullshit!" The word exploded out of Eagle, who hadn't said a word until then. Gone was the easy manner she had begun to expect from him, replaced by a hard, deep frustration.

"You've been sneaking out at night instead of sleeping," Snake murmured, attempting to inject some calm back into the gathering. "You've been jumpy and distracted. We're just trying to understand."

At _sneaking out at night_, Alex felt the first few clenches of betrayal squeeze her heart; it was familiar now, an old friend to add to the bewildering mix of confusion and horror swirling through her. She turned to Tom. "You _told_ them?"

Tom stared at her as if he'd really like to die. "I – I was worried."

"I _told_ you I'm _fine_!"

"Quiet!" Snake said, and although he hadn't raised his voice, the word still rang out like a gunshot. "I think maybe it would be best if one of us talks to Alex alone."

Alex snorted and said, bitterly, "What, you don't like the pack mentality you've got going on?"

"Right." Wolf gripped her arm – gently, but firmly, making it clear that he had no intentions of letting go. "We're going to your room."

Once they got in, Alex sat stiffly on the edge of her bed, and Wolf shut the door. She wasn't very fond of the positions, but since she hadn't wanted to be here at all, there wasn't much she could do in any position that would make this better.

Wolf crossed his arms, unconsciously defensive although he was obviously trying to seem sympathetic and open. "Kit," he said (resorting to subtle military control in the absence of the ability to be a proper parental figure, she noted absently), "something happened to you. I don't know what, and I don't know why the hell you were cleared to come back without this being dealt with, but it's obvious that _something_ happened that you need to talk about."

All of the sudden, Alex felt as if all the energy had gone out of her. She slumped with the sudden exhaustion. "Nothing happened, Wolf."

"Bullshit – "

"_That's the problem_." She spat the words out like something vile, and felt a sense of almost perverse pleasure at the dumbstruck way Wolf looked at her. "Nothing happened, and that's – there's always _something._ They're always telling me I won't have to do anything, and then everything goes to s_hit_, and I wind up – "

She stood, tired but too restless to remain sitting anymore. "I wind up in some psychopath's basement waiting to be fed into a mincer or in a clinic that's planning to sell my organs off – but this time there was _nothing_. I wasn't even involved. We got the notice to stand down and sit out the last week to protect our cover, and that was it. And I should feel ecstatic, but I _can't_." Her voice pitched viciously on the edge of a sob, but she pushed it away._ "_I keep expecting something really awful to happen because it always _does._ And I don't know what to – "

She ducked her head quickly before she could do something unbelievably stupid like start _crying_ in front of _Wolf, _and she stayed like that for a while, just breathing. When she finally felt brave enough to glance up at him, he had moved closer, looking at her with what she could almost call compassion. "So the midnight visits?"

She dropped her eyes, unable to face him dead-on when she told him how truly pathetic she'd become. "Nightmares." The word came out in a whisper, barely present.

A hand touched her shoulder. She jerked away, but it followed, tugging her back and twisting her around so she was facing Wolf again. "I'm only going to do this once," he said, "so don't fight it." And then, before she could slip away, he pulled her into a hug.

It was probably the most awkward hug she had ever received, both because he obviously had no idea how tight to hold her or any idea of what he was doing, really, and because she had tensed up the moment he had come in contact with her. He still held her. "What you're suffering from is called post-traumatic stress disorder," he said, quietly. "It can affect the most experienced of soldiers. It's nothing to be – It's going to be okay."

She let out a semi-hysterical laugh from somewhere in the vicinity of his shoulder, muffled by the fabric of his shirt. He took that as his cue to let go of the hug, but not the tight grip he had on her shoulders that was keeping her angled towards him. "This is what I'm going to do," he said. "I'm going to go tell those idiots out there to shove off. And then I'm going to call up MI6 headquarters and Mrs. Bones or Mrs. Jones or whatever her name is, and I'm going to raise hell until she finds someone who has the clearance to treat you for this and opening available within the next couple days."

For a moment, she considered protesting, but one look at the quietly immovable resolve in Wolf's eyes stopped her dead-on.

"And this is what you're going to do," he continued, voice even and calm like Snake must have taught him. "You're going to talk to me. You're going to tell me when you're feeling like something bad's going to happen. And you're going to stop going to that kid Harris's house in the middle of the night, even if it means waking me up instead."

Alex blinked hard against the sudden tears she could feel gathering in her eyes, trying to spill out. "You know, I'm not some kid you need to protect from the big bad nightmares."

"No," Wolf said, quietly. "You're a member of my team. And we're going to fix this."

* * *

><p>...I have the weirdest urge to say "If you or your loved one is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, don't wait: act now." Next week, on <em>Units of Our Lives<em>, Snake discovers he has a twin brother he never knew, and Eagle confesses his undying love for Fox.


	11. The Morning After

Oh, hey, a vacation-update! Hastily edited because I have a piece of pie awaiting me. Peace out, pie-less ones!

* * *

><p>Alex had absolutely no intentions of taking up Wolf's offer to wake him the next time she had a nightmare. Unfortunately, that meant when she jolted awake later that night with pale half-moon marks etched into her palms from digging her fingernails in so hard, she didn't have anything to do. Since Tom had gone to K-Unit about her midnight visits, she didn't feel right sneaking out to visit him anymore – or anywhere at all, honestly. She didn't really want to do that to Wolf know that he wasn't so bad(or, at least, not as bad as she'd originally thought he was), and anyway, she wasn't entirely sure what he would do now if he caught her still slipping out at night.<p>

So that was how, thirty painfully terrifying minutes later, she found herself in the doorway of Wolf's room, watching the outlines of his body in the dark and trying to decide if she was really going to be so pathetic she'd wake up a grown man just so she didn't have to face her dreams. It was weird, actually, because as stupid as she felt, she also felt sort of _better_, having this sort of solid proof that there was another person alive in the flat who wasn't being drowned or maimed or slowly dissected without anesthetic every time he closed his eyes. (Or, at least, if he was, he didn't show it.) And there wasn't any worry of waking him up _accidentally_, at least; he was SAS, but she was Scorpia-trained, and if there was one useful thing the organization had taught her, it was how to slip in and out of a location undetected.

After a while, though, she decided it was just too creepy to be hanging around watching him sleep, so she shut the door silently and ran herself a bath instead. Almost two hours later, she climbed out, looking like a prune but feeling much calmer, and even managed a few hours' sleep propped up on the sofa with an old cassette of _Doctor Who_ turned on low.

* * *

><p>Wolf made breakfast the next morning and didn't specifically say anything about having found her clutching a cushion and snoring on the sofa, which she felt somewhat grateful for. What he <em>did<em> say, however, was "You have an appointment at two today. Do you like pancakes?", which she felt was redeemed by the offer of something she could slather in syrup

Things didn't get awkward, really, until she realized that Wolf was staying in. While she tried to complete coursework, he hovered and stared and basically did everything that could possibly put her more on edge than she already was until she finally snapped out, "You don't have to stare at me every moment, I'm not going to suddenly explode."

"Right," he said with that unnerving uncertainty he'd adopted for the day. It almost made her wish for the Wolf of the night before. It might have been difficult and painful to get through, but at least _he'd_ seemed to know what he was doing. Now, it was obvious that, although he was no less determined to do the right thing, he barely knew what the right thing was. "That was probably not. You're not supposed to be left alone right now, but I have – as long as you _tell me_," and he took on the brook-no-arguments this-is-a-direct-order tone he'd had the night before, "if anything happens, I could run next door. Sort of promised to move a bureau or a cupboard or something, I can't remember which."

Despite herself, Alex's lips curled up into a smile. "Oh," she said innocently, "is that what they're calling it these days? Well, as long as you don't take _too_ long and remember to use protection –"

"Remember," Wolf said, "that I could stay here and stare at you for the next few hours."

"Right," Alex said quickly. "Go on then." As he slipped out the door, she called out an innocent _Have fun!_

* * *

><p>Thirty minutes later, she wasn't sure letting him go had been such a good idea. It wasn't that she was scared to be on her own, but she hadn't realised what a relief it was to have him around until he wasn't. Without him there, she found herself even more on edge, cataloguing every sound, every motion, anything that could conceivably turn out to be some sort of horrific disaster. Admittedly, she had to admit that she still would do when he was present, but some part of her had subconsciously relaxed knowing that there was a highly-trained soldier also on hand to keep the place secure.<p>

She was simultaneously relieved and startled out of her skin when the phone rang and Eagle piped out a cheery hello on the other end of the line. She straightened herself out and said, "What do you want?", doing her best to regulate her voice into something even and calm.

"What do I want?" Eagle said indignantly. "It couldn't just be that I called up to hear the dulcet tones of my favourite youngest-ever team member? I have to have some sort of ulterior motive?"

Alex let the silence on the line speak for her.

"I might've rung to ask James a question," he admitted. "But it was really something like three-tenths question, seven-tenths check on you."

"Oh," she said. Weirdly, the flat seemed a lot less potentially dangerous than it had a minute ago. Maybe it was the thought of yet another highly-trained soldier ringing just to check in. "He's off moving furniture."

There was a pause on the line.

"I'm sorry," Eagle said, "I must have heard you wrong. I thought you said James was _moving furniture_."

"There's a girl in the next flat over – Mia – she's really tiny, and I guess she asked him for help because she couldn't move anything on her own." she said. (Actually, Alex suspects Mia could have managed perfectly well on her own, but she couldn't begrudge the girl taking advantage of such a convenient resource like a heavily muscled SAS man right next door.) "Unless they actually _are_ having sex."

Eagle spat something out on the other end of the line. "_What?_"

She shrugged, though she knew he couldn't see it. "Just a theory."

"Are you old enough to know about that? I mean, obviously you are, but are you old enough to be talking about it in relation to James' love life? Because, honestly, I'm not sure _I'm_ old enough for that – "

"I _am_ fourteen," Alex pointed out as she drew her legs up under her comfortably. When the refrigerator spit an ice cube out into the tray with a loud clunk, she didn't even flinch. "It's not as if I don't know what sex is."

"Well, _yes_, but shouldn't it still be sort of theoretical or oh my god please tell me it's only theoretical."

Driven by a sudden sense of cruelty, Alex said, "Actually, there was this one time – "

Eagle groaned loudly.

" – that this woman and her girlfriend wandered in while I was searching their room, so I had to duck under the bed while they had sex on top of it."

There was silence on the other end of the line.

"Alex, I don't think we can associate anymore," Eagle said, finally. "You have better on-the-field stories than I do, and I just don't think I can live with that."

* * *

><p>Eventually, though, it was almost two, and she sat in a waiting room, staring at a blank white door that, any minute now, would open and reveal the person she was supposed to bare her soul to. If that wasn't excruciating enough, Snake had showed at one and insisted on waiting for her with Wolf, for moral support. Just as it turned two, someone stepped out and said, "Alex Rider?"<p>

The two SAS men stood and accompanied (well, more like _ensured_) her first few steps toward the room, but once beyond the threshold, she was on her own. The doctor immediately launched into something, a welcome-my-name-is-I-want-you-to-feel-comfortable spiel, but instead of listening, she found herself examining the room. Despite a dismal attempt at comfort in the form of a few overstuffed armchairs, the room looked sterile and free of personal touch; only an original painting of a city street on the wall saved it from utter blandness.

"Why don't you sit down?" the doctor said, gesturing to one of the seats. Uneasily, Alex noted that her smile looked a bit forced. "Then we can get started."

All of the sudden it crashed in on her, how she didn't know anything about this woman, how she could be literally anything and anyone. Her exits weren't good: the window was too high up to climb out, and the doctor had managed to maneuver herself between Alex and the door. The walls, she realized with a jolt, were soundproofed for privacy; literally anything could happen in here and no one outside would know.

"Are you okay?" the doctor said, frowning, and reached for something on the table and a voice deep inside Alex said _gun!_

Before she could stop or think or do anything but _react_, Alex threw a tissue box at the doctor and bolted from the room, streaking out of the waiting room and towards the staircase. Wolf and Snake stared at each other for a moment as she ran past before one of whom swore and they both jumped to their feet to tear after her.


End file.
